Posted
by
Soulskill
on Saturday October 13, 2012 @04:54PM
from the fattening-in-the-first-degree dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Soda makers, along with other trade organizations, filed a lawsuit Friday challenging the New York soda ban that is about to be implemented in the city. 'Last month, the board voted eight to zero, with one abstention, to ban restaurants, mobile food carts, delis and concessions at movie theaters, stadiums and arenas from selling sugary drinks in cups or containers larger than 16 ounces. The ban, designed to reduce obesity, is slated to begin March 12. ... The lawsuit also claims that new regulations are “arbitrary and capricious,” violating a section of the New York Civil Laws and Rules. Opponents have specifically said it’s unfair that convenience stores, including 7-Eleven and its famous Big Gulp drink, would be exempt.'"

Oh, one thing comes to my mind: They could allow for large servings under the condition that the glass/cup will have multiple mandatory photos of repulsively obese people on it. Just like with cigarettes and the warning labels on them.

Oh, one thing comes to my mind: They could allow for large servings under the condition that the glass/cup will have multiple mandatory photos of repulsively obese people on it. Just like with cigarettes and the warning labels on them.

Do the busybodies who are convinced they're smarter than everyone else, and hence, entitled to manage their lives, ever rest?

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
- C.S. Lewis

If they get away with it, next will be pornography, then any art that anybody even thinks somehow resembles pornography (they have done this to historical works in D.C. already), then condoms, then public speech at local government meetings, then...

First they came for the socialists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

Actually, I think you need some exercise. I mandate having a cop in your room, waking you up at 5am and making you run 5 miles every morning. And no more alcohol at all for you. No computer games, and a limit to internet access - 5 hours per week - it rots your brain.

If we need to take the internet off the little nerd to let him live a life, then so be it.

The government has no business trying to reduce obesity.
Instead, the government should be working hard to make sure that obesity is much more quickly and certainly fatal. Say, "morbid obesity" causing cetain death within five years if the person does not lose weight.
I mean just imagine. Imagine adults who are 50-100 pounds overweight or more. Before they were 50 pounds overweight they were 10 pounds overweight. Then they were 15 pounds overweight. Then 20. Then 30. You mean to tell me an adult person cannot see this happening and say "hey, I must be doing something incorrectly. if I keep doing what I am doing now, i will keep gaining weight, and if I don't change that, I will be morbidly obese"? Really? For the love of God don't let people like that vote. Don't let them drive. Letting these people vote and drive is cruel and unusual punishment without due process for every person with a shred of sense.
Besides, if morbid obesity were 100% fatal within five years, the lard-asses would suddenly stop making excuses (and oh how they love giving fairytale excuses for why their bad decisions are somehow not their fault. with people like this NOTHING is EVER their fault you know, they are perfect angels and they are perfect victims who demand your false sympathy). They would suddenly start forming better eating habits and exercising. If not, well then, we don't need them clogging up the health-care system. Real consequences means good choices. Stop coddling these people who so thoroughly fail at life. If you have a shred of respect for yourself you won't be a fatass to begin with, you will take care of that before it's so severe.

We could also do the same for people with any other addiction. Alcoholics, drug addicts, compulsive gamblers, compulsive liars, sex addicts, game addicts... the list goes on and on. We would need some large camps to concentrate these people into for effective use of some sort of solution with finality. Later, the program could be expanded to include anonymous cowards and anyone with any sort of medical defect such as hair that is not blond or eyes that are not blue.

Between the government and the private sector, I know who's lied to me more about products. Hint: it rhymes with sivate prector.

Indeed, government probably won't lie to you, on this particular subject.

When they treat adults like you as though you were a two-year-old, they will do it quite openly and honestly. And shamelessly.

But hey, at least they aren't lying, right?

Or maybe the real question is what happened to you to make you crave so many sodas instead of honestly desiring to quench your thirst the natural and most effective way, with water. Maybe another real question is why you cannot take responsibility yourself for how you eat and whether you exercise, and remedy either (or both) as needed, why you would need any corporation or government agency to tell you how you should eat and when you should exercise. That would be a revolutionary concept, huh?

Of course if you are a total victim then the "advantage" (if you are warped and perverted enough to think of it as such) is that nothing is ever your fault. You're just a leaf in the wind, powerless to change anything, totally at the mercy of corporations and government to which you have ceded all of your personal power. Then sure, you get to blame them for your problems, yeah, maybe you can convince yourself that this is satisfying, are you happy with your life yet? Or you can trade away the blame-game bullshit and do what it takes to make better decisions and see with your own eyes that they bear fruit in the form of a better life that you get to run yourself.

The victimhood mentality is astonishingly popular. I must conclude that the people who prefer it have never honestly mastered both options. It's like a computer user who swears Windows is the best OS for his needs, yet he knows nothing about any other OS. His opinion is not a valid one because he has no basis for comparison. Now if he were equally skillful in Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, and OSX, and then still preferred Windows, I would call that a valid opinion.

People crave sugar because it kept their ancient hunter-gatherer ancestors alive. Those who sought and consumed high energy foods when they were available stored up energy to last them through the harsh times. This continues into modern times. Humans are genetically programmed to desire foods laden with fat and sugar above all else. All that has changed is the availability - where those ancestors would have had to search for unpicked fruit or brave the bees to steal honey, modern man just guzzles down coke whenever he wants to. He always wants to.

Because fighting instincts is hard. Telling people they just need to control their diet is about as effective as abstinance-only sex education. An effective response needs to examine the underlying instinct and either find a way to make it easier to control, or allow people to indulge while removing the negative consequences of doing so.

Actually, even in the "You'll pry our imperial measurements from our cold, dead hands" States of America, soda is, in fact, sold in 1, 2, and (though I haven't seen them in a few years) 3 liter bottles.

The 3-liter bottles seem to be used by the "cheap store-brand or off-brand sodas". I have a 3-liter bottle of "Super Chill Pineapple Soda" in my fridge right now, and I recall the Food Lion branded sodas coming in 3-liter bottles as well.

Drinks used to be served in smaller containers, and society survived just fine. Restaurants started using larger containers to exploit flaws in human psychology, allowing them to trick customers into buying more than they want or need. This is done to make more money, and to hell with the health of the general public.

Your free will isn't as all-powerful as you think it is. There are a great many people spending billions of dollars every year on cutting edge science to control your purchasing decisions, and you don't stand a snowflake's chance in hell against them. Only as a group can we fight back.

Advertisers spend half a trillion dollars every year to control you. Any one individual might be able to resist, but on the balance, advertising works. They wouldn't spend so much money on it if it didn't.

I wonder why crap like this gets modded as "insightful". I can only guess that this poster has no sense of history. Something like this isn't going to stop with regulating the size of your drinks. Don't get me wrong, sure it'd be nice to have a healthier public, but I'd rather have a free, fat public than a enslaved, skinny public.

If there's public support for a law, it's not tyranny. It's a law in a democracy.

I find it strange that there's so much coverage of a simple law designed to reduce consumption of what amounts to a cup of poison that is enormously expensive for our society in the long run. If you really want to fill your body with empty calories and caffeine, you are free to do so. It's just slightly less convenient.

And now I get it. You can take away an American's right to due process. You can take away their right to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures. But don't make the ultimate mistake and deny their right to idiotic convenience.

find it strange that there's so much coverage of a simple law designed to reduce consumption of what amounts to a cup of poison that is enormously expensive for our society in the long run.

Because its fundamentally not the job of a government to tell me how to live my life. Its job is to enforce law and order (keeping others from doing me harm), maintain basic infrastructure, and keep foreign countries from invading.

Im not sure where anyone got the idea that democracy should extend to voting on how I live my life, but that sounds awfully oppressive to me.

so the answer to coporate tyranny is what? government tyranny on top of/next to it?

In a democracy, the government is accountable to the people. A corporation is only accountable to its shareholders.

As unpopular as this opinion may be in the USA, I'd rather have the government making these sorts of rules rather than leaving it up to the private sector. At least you get a chance to vote out the government every few years.

The New York law is a very sensible public health measure that is (alas) doomed to failure because of corporate power and the inability of the US system of government in recent times to actually achieve anything worthwhile.

If you think advertising doesn't affect you, that goes to show how well it is working. The fact that I am aware of how well it works and take pains to avoid seeing it does not make me weak-willed. It makes me self-aware.

Obviously advertising works, but it doesn't control what I do.

Those statements are contradictory. The entire goal of advertising is to get people to do certain things. You can't say advertising works while simultaneously thinking that it doesn't allow some form of control over people.

They are not, unless "doctors save people" means "we are all immortal now."

Advertising stays in business only because it is profitable - not because it controls everyone's mind. A manufacturer with a 5% market share may gain 3% more customers but the cost of ads could be 90% of that increase in revenue - and it is still worth doing. But the manufacturer in the end only has 8% of the market, not 100%. Complete control is impossible; few men will buy a dress just becaus

I seem to be able to decide for myself which products I buy. I can't recall the last time I bought something and later regretted it, but then again I don't buy much. I don't have some superhuman form of free-will. I just take the time to think about what I'm doing before I do it. Just because some people don't do this doesn't mean that everyone lacks self-control. If you were to legislate to the lowest common denominator, you'd have to legally prescribe every action a person can take to make sure they were all safe.

On the other hand, I do seem to be incapable of resisting the government. The threat of imprisonment is enough to compel me to pay my taxes and conform to federal rules and regulations. So you can see why I'd be concerned by frivolous government interventions such as this ban. Every one of them has the potential to harm me.

There's nothing wrong with enlisting the support of others to stop abuse, but there are other ways of doing that which don't have so much collateral damage.

Drinks used to be served in smaller containers, and society survived just fine. Restaurants started using larger containers to exploit flaws in human psychology, allowing them to trick customers into buying more than they want or need. This is done to make more money, and to hell with the health of the general public.

Or public health officials have been tricked into thinking it's more important for people to be healthy than to eat satisfying junk food and are exploiting flaws in human psychology regarding the correlation between physical appearance and mental state (we are biased towards believing that attractive people are happier).

That's the problem with the "people are stupid" line of argumentation that's prevalent in the nanny state -- it doesn't really explain why we should prefer moving decision-making from one group of stupid people to another group of stupid people.

Restaurants started using larger containers to... trick customers into buying more than they want or need.

Methinks your theory has a hole. If I'm getting free refills, then the restaurant doesn't benefit from me drinking more. They benefit from me drinking less (i.e. same revenue at lower cost to them). Even if they charged for refills, they would make more money with smaller cups as that means more refills (i.e. more revenue at the same cost to them).

(An important factor here is that two 8oz cups of soda are prices to cost more than one 16oz cup.)

Your free will isn't as all-powerful as you think it is. There are a great many people spending billions of dollars every year on cutting edge science to control your purchasing decisions, and you don't stand a snowflake's chance in hell against them. Only as a group can we fight back.

Bullshit. How come "fighting as a group" means some bunch of knuckleheaded bureaucrats get to tell me how to act and what I can buy? There's not even the illusion of freedom there.

" Eat like a PIG, you pay for the heart bypass. Smoke, you pay for the cancer surgery."

Drive, you pay for the trauma doctor to patch you up when you have an accident. Walk outside, you pay for the damage to your lungs from pollution. Don't wrap yourself up in a bubble, you pay for everything.

Going further: Didn't we try this before with alcohol -- ban alcohol and we'll eliminate alcoholism? Instead of creating a potential for a smaller version of that black market and the associated criminal activity with increasing costs in enforcement that went with it, a campaign to educate (which I'm not a big fan of as being an alternative) might be a useful way of redirecting those costs. Would something blunt, such as: "Hey, New Yorkers. Tired of the rep for being an unhealthy Fat F***; drink a diet cola

A regulation allowing anyone to legally work around its intent is more than ridiculous -- it has no substance and is the same as if it didn't exist at all.

I don't think that statement is actually correct. There was an experiment done where people where told to eat until they were full out of a bowl of soup. And the amount people ate was strongly correlated to the size of the container, despite everyone believing they only ate the amount they needed.

I believe intent of the law may be served nearly as well even if one or two additional drinks were free. i.e. $2 for the first 16-oz drink, and then second drink was free.

There was an experiment done where people where told to eat until they were full out of a bowl of soup. And the amount people ate was strongly correlated to the size of the container, despite everyone believing they only ate the amount they needed.

One problem with this sort of experiment is the "starving college student given free food" demographic.

I know of one such poor college student who ate nearly the entire turkey when invited to a friend's house for Thanksgiving, but the next week of eating a few hundred calories a day easily made up for it. This allowed money to be re-allocated for other necessities, like rent.

I've never been that bad, but I still tend to eat most everything served to me (especially at restaurants), and if it's a lot, I just

Ummm...water and juice are both 100% chemicals. The classic definition of a chemical is a substance that was created through a process of configuring molecular structures. Water and juice both fit that bill. I think what you're looking for is the difference between chemicals existing in nature, and ones that are synthesized by man. When you think about it, any form of cooking or fermenting we do results in synthesized chemicals, even something as basic as baking bread or making wine.

it's usually cool. there are expensive bottled waters, but you can ask for tap.

i only had an issue once. starbucks told me i couldn't just order tap water, and then i told them I'd pay a reasonable price (rent is expensive after all). they were confused, and it went up to the manager (lol), who charged me 50 cents (including refills).

it's something i like about Manhattan. if someone tells you no, you can often tell them you're willing to pay, and they will change their mind quickly.

Frankly, New York City can do more to improve its citizens' health than banning certain sizes of HFCS drinks (because calling them "sugary" simply ignores the fact that soda can be made using real sugar).

Frankly, New York City can do more to improve its citizens' health than banning certain sizes of HFCS drinks (because calling them "sugary" simply ignores the fact that soda can be made using real sugar).

While soda can and used to be made using real sugar, they haven't from the big corps in quite awhile. And seeing that you can only go Pepsi Products or Coke Products, you are stuck with soda made with HFCS instead of sugar.

While soda can and used to be made using real sugar, they haven't from the big corps in quite awhile.

Early 1980's, import tariffs, import limits, and a mandatory price floor even for sugar produced locally were established by our "its for your own good" government. The upshot of all this is that Americans need to spend 3 to 4 times as much for sugar as the rest of the world does.

The only solution is to make it illegal to try to legislate new victim-less crimes into existence, because unlike the "crimes" they are trying to prevent.. these legislations arent victim-less.

Frankly, New York City can do more to improve its citizens' health than banning certain sizes of HFCS drinks (because calling them "sugary" simply ignores the fact that soda can be made using real sugar).

What's silly is your assumption that HFCS is a problem and not cane sugar, or the idea that cane sugar is a good nutrient to pad calories with. "Sugary" is meant to cover both cane sugar and HFCS.

Here's some quotes from the ban:

"(1) Sugary drink means [..] (B) is sweetened by the manufacturer or establishment with sugar or another caloric sweetener;"

"Americans consume 200-300 more calories daily than 30 years ago, with the largest single increase due to sugary drinks.10 Sugary drinks are also the largest so

The daily reference intake for sugar states that added sugar should nto exceed 25% of calories.For a 2000 Cal intake that is 500 Cal. The 7-eleven shitty "super gulps" and whatever exceed thisin a single serving.

If you ask me they should just go and make a law that a single serving cannot contain more than50% of the reference intake. That way you can sell those stupid 5 pint "drinks". You just would notbe allowed to have half a pound of sugar in them.

Plus, why could I not then just drink multiple ones?Makes as much sense as those TSA rules about x amount in a bottle. So instead of one big bottle that's not allowed, you put the solution in two small ones, each of which is allowed.

> I cannot sell you this 16oz cup of soda, but you can buy these two 8oz for the same price.

Plus, why could I not then just drink multiple ones?Makes as much sense as those TSA rules about x amount in a bottle. So instead of one big bottle that's not allowed, you put the solution in two small ones, each of which is allowed.

> I cannot sell you this 16oz cup of soda, but you can buy these two 8oz for the same price.

It doesn't make sense if the goal is to prevent all people from consuming more than x ounces of soda.

However, public health policy is not about solving every fringe case - it's about changing behavior in the general population. Sometimes public health policy decisions can even be harmful for certain individuals, but the overall health benefit is worth it (i.e. a small percentage of the population may be allergic to a vaccination, but overall vaccinations save more lives than are lost to complications from the vaccine).

I can believe that banning soda sizes larger than 16 ounces will result in a net decrease in consumption. There are certainly going to be some people that, when limited to a "tiny" 16 ounce soda, they'll get around the ban by buying two 16 ouncers when they really just wanted a 24 ounce soda, but 2 sodas are harder to carry than one, and are in general more expensive (though I wouldn't be surprised to see 2-for-one specials after the ban (Buy one 16 oz and get one free!). It seems unlikely that many people are going to buy a hot dog from a vendor and try to juggle two 16 ounce sodas in their hands - but if they really need that much sugar, they still have that option, which is why these plaintiffs will probably not win this lawsuit.

Probably they will start having permanent 2-for-1 specials on "spill proof" cups of soda containing 12 oz. of soda and 12 oz. of air to prevent spills from sloshing.

Perhaps some customers will notice that they can pour one into the other and throw out the now empty cup. Outside of the additional landfill fodder and greenhouse gases from the production and transportation of twice as many 24 ounce cups, all's back pretty much to normal.

However, public health policy is not about solving every fringe case - it's about changing behavior in the general population.

It is not the job of government to 'change behavior in the general population' in free countries. This public service mandate -> public healthcare -> draconian control over diet 'unreasoning' is the kind of thinking that leads to tyrannical socialism. to hell with that.

You can still purchase as much soda as you like, you just can't purchase it in large containers. Sounds like a balance between public health and freedom to choose.

As someone who likes to buy a large (32oz) beverage at fast food places with lunch and sip at it my leisure for the rest of the day whenever I'm in NYC: fuck you. Even if the price is the same, I will be stuck having to carry two containers, and make damn sure to chuck the extra one in the middle of the street, hopefully to get lodged in a storm drain and cause some flooding.

But hey, it's better than letting people control their own portioning, right?

While I see your point there is a difference. Obese individuals don't usually die quickly, they take many years of gradual decline to pass away and tend to use a lot more than average medical care in the process. Base jumpers tend to pass almost instantly and care generally is confined to an ambulance ride to be pronounced DOA at the end of it.

16oz is HUGE. You know that soft drinks used to be sold in 6 (yes, SIX) oz bottles, and that was considered a reasonable serving size? People would drink the 6 oz soft drink and be quite content with that.

You live in a world that has gone mad, and your idea of what is "normal" has been formed in that mad world. It's why over 80% of the population in many areas is considered either overweight or obese. It's why childhood obesity used to be nearly unheard of, and is now common. It's why diabetes is impac

Or people could drink any size soda they wished and GET OFF THE FUCKING COUCH AND DO SOME PHYSICAL ACTIVITY. For fuck's sake. You're raving about a solution to a problem that isn't a solution, it's not even a stop-gap. PHYSICAL ACTIVITY is the ONLY real counter-measure to obesity.

I like how you consider 16oz small, but 20oz is ok. Actually the thing is MOST fast food restaurants have 20oz sizes, some don't have a smaller size. So a 20oz size makes sense (only in that is a common size today, not because actual value means anything)
But the law itself doesn't make sense. What it DOES do is encourage more trash (Mr Major said himself "you can always buy 2") And of course for people who want more and buy two, it means more money for the company.
Just stop trying to legislate everythin

I'm not conservative... But I have to say, I recall a LOT of liberals flaming conservatives for implying that laws such as these would ever be passed in health care related arguments... Looks like the right was on the money about that for once.

You know, while I fundamentally disagree with the law as being unconstitutional, at least it seemed well intentioned. Now I find they exempted all kinds of places from it. WTF? It's okay to stop by the convenience store and grab a 96 ounce coke for my drive home but I can't have one at the Cinema? You gotta be kidding me. What the hell makes it okay to indulge at 7-eleven but not at the Movies? jeez!

Good points from the article for the lazy:-People who feel like they've been "good" for one meal will simply compensate by eating worse for the rest of the day-A construction worker who buys one large drink and nurses it all day would be impacted. (I would include tourists and shoppers in this as well).

And the best one:-If this fails, no one will try anything like it anywhere in the US for a *very long time*, preventing any actual worthwhile legislation from being passed.

I've been reading and reading and reading about sugar for the last couple of months and that video is really something everyone should watch. The stuff is quite genuinely addictive, I'm sure in very very low quantities it's quite FUN to eat but it does nothing for you, the problem is what it does to your body - I'm quite horribly addicted to the stuff.